


it comes to me, as of a dream

by xpityx



Series: to a stranger [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-08-29 18:39:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8500909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Padme watches uneasily as her husband wanders around her rooms, picking up and examining trinkets seemingly without order, before putting them back just far enough away from their original positions to make her frown slightly in annoyance.She would’ve have coaxed him into sitting down and talking to her some time ago, if it hadn’t been so blindly obvious that something was very much amiss. She dreads the day he comes to her and tells her that he has informed the Order in which collective orifice they can put their Code, or that he has announced their marriage to the Chancellor, or some other, horribly ill-advised course of action.





	1. beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this took so long >.<
> 
> Read the first bit first (which is just Obikin) otherwise this won't make much sense...
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely [SlumberousTrash](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SlumberousTrash) (who is also looking forward to the smut ^^)

 

 

Padme watches uneasily as her husband wanders around her rooms, picking up and examining trinkets seemingly without order, before putting them back just far enough away from their original positions to make her frown slightly in annoyance.

 

She would’ve have coaxed him into sitting down and talking to her some time ago, if it hadn’t been so blindly obvious that something was very much amiss. She dreads the day he comes to her and tells her that he has informed the Order in which collective orifice they can put their Code, or that he has announced their marriage to the Chancellor, or some other, horribly ill-advised course of action.

 

She sighs quietly to herself and begins to unwind her hair. Anakin freezes in the act of studying a priceless sculpture that had been a gift from Queen Jamillia and turns to her, worry writ on his expressive features, “what is it, my love?”

 

Padme looks up, “I have missed you, these last few weeks,” she replies.

 

 _Guilt_ she sees now - that is the emotion that causes his distress. It’s not a feeling she sees often in him, and she wonders at its source.

 

“Anakin,” she starts, firm and sure, “come and tell me what the matter is.”

 

He sits in front of her at her gesture, and she reaches to take his hands in hers. He won’t quite look her in the eye.

 

“I slept with Obi-Wan.”

 

It takes a second for her to parse the meaning of his words, and when she does she sits back, in surprise more than anything.

 

Anakin leans forward and takes her hands in his again, “I love you! I love you more than words can say, he had been having constant nightmares and I…”

 

“You had sex with Obi-Wan Kenobi?” She interrupts, feeling the need to clarify that they are talking about the same act - that they are talking about the same _person._

 

Anakin nods, unsteadily, seemingly incapable of saying the actual words.

 

Padme is sure she will be angry presently, not so much that it happened, but that Anakin had done something he obviously _thought_ was a betrayal, however at the moment she is simply having difficulty getting past the shock. The fact that they loved each other was obvious: it was easy to see for anyone who had spent more than ten seconds in their company, but she couldn’t imagine the circumstances that would result in either of them admitting such to each other: either verbally or physically. She has no shame in acknowledging to herself that, although she considers Obi-Wan a friend, she finds him a little intimidating on occasion. He is, well, he is a _Jedi_ in a way that her husband never will be, for which she is profoundly grateful.

 

She realises she has been sat in silence for an uncomfortably long time and, in searching for something to say, asks the first question that comes to mind:

 

“What were his nightmares of?”

 

Anakin looks away, as if he is about to betray a confidence.

 

“He dreamt that he killed me: over and over.”

 

Well, that would be enough to melt Obi-Wan’s considerable reserve, she imagined. She has a flash of how Anakin and Obi-Wan would look together and shuts it down mercilessly - not sure how Anakin would react if he caught the thought. Closed relationships were a peculiarity of the upper classes on Coruscant, but they had always seemed strangely antiquated to her.  

 

“Please don’t be angry with me, I cannot bear it when you are angry.”

 

Padme, cuts her gaze back to Anakin, who is looking back at her like a kicked loth-cat.

 

“I have every right to be angry with you, Anakin Skywalker, as you well know.” She gets up, moving to be away from him and his pitiful gaze.

 

“As you are well aware, relationships in Naboo are not so bound into the idea of exclusivity between two people, but even the youngest child knows that without communication, they are not ties that last.”

 

Anakin takes a breath to speak, but she continues: she is interrupted enough in the Senate, she will not tolerate such in her own apartments.

 

“You had, and still have, no dirt-bound idea on how I would feel about such a relationship, which is why you are feeling guilty. You know you have done wrong Anakin, so asking me not to be angry is out of the question.”

 

She turns back to him, “Furthermore, if you try to pass this off as some tumble without meaning, I will be doubly angry, for both my sake, and for Obi-Wan’s, who is my friend.”

 

She pauses, and Anakin remains silent, obviously deciding that not speaking until he’s asked a direct question is the safer route.

 

She softens slightly, “I know you love him, and he you, but… I wish you’d spoken to me about how you felt first.”

 

He comes to her, hesitantly.

 

“I know that you, that you both...”

 

Anakin struggles for a second, and she aches for him, even now, for the way he has twisted himself up to fit some Jedi ideal.

 

“That you both love me, but…”

 

He hunches into himself, and it is seems such a pantomime of pain that she almost wonders if he is doing it on purpose.

 

“If you asked me, I could, I would not see Obi-Wan, or I would move out of our apartment.”

 

Padme smiles sadly to herself, whilst Anakin fixes his gaze to her floor. For all the lauded Jedi meditation, she doubts he knows how much such an act would cost him. She has always known Anakin and Obi-Wan were a matched set, but this particular development has rather thrown her and, as much as she loves her husband, she needs Anakin to leave her alone a while so that she can think.

 

“I _am_ angry with you, but that doesn't mean that I don't love you, but I would like to be alone with my thoughts for a little while.”

 

She tilts her head forward until she catches his downturned eyes, and he gives her a shy smile in return.

 

Then, in fit of sudden courtliness, he bends to kiss her hand as if she were a space pirate from some Azanti fable. She finds it sweet and charming as always, having long ago given up being disappointed in herself for doing so. Anakin swirls out of the door, the edges of his robes flaring behind him.

 

Padme has had much practice at swallowing her smiles and does so now: she wonders if Jedi children are allowed to play dress-up? For a second as he exits her rooms she imagines Anakin as a child: in a black cloak and forbidding hood, pretending to rule the world.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

She sits in polite, questioning silence, as she waits for Obi-Wan to give her a reason for this unannounced visit, mere days after Anakin had announced their unexpected tryst.

 

So far he has sat down, crossed and uncrossed his ankles, cleared his throat, and then stood again, but said nothing at all beyond his initial greeting.

 

It would be clear to anyone that Obi-Wan is nervous, but it is suddenly clear to Padme that his nervousness is _because of her._ She feels a rush of power at the realisation: this is The Negotiator, her husband’s teacher, one of the most feared Jedi in the Galaxy.

 

She allows herself a second to revel in feeling before getting to the heart of the matter:

 

“You love him.”

 

It hadn’t been a question, but Obi-Wan answers regardless, “Yes.”

 

“As do I.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Would you take him from me?”

 

Obi-Wan makes a sharp gesture with one hand, “Never.”

 

She weighs the truth of this, not as well as a Force-user, perhaps, but Padme Amidala had been elected Queen of Naboo at the age of 14 and knows that Obi-Wan is not lying to her.

 

She lets her mask slip a little, and Obi-Wan relaxes enough to smile back at her when she offers one to him. They had been friends before, and she hopes they will be again once both men have gotten over their awkwardness. Goddess knew they would benefit from a united front when handling Anakin.

 

She walks up to him and stretches up to her toes so she can place a kiss on his rough cheek. Obi-Wan looks a little dazed at the gesture, and Padme’s smile takes on a mischievous lilt as she turns to pour them tea.

 

“Will you sit with me a while?”

 

Obi-Wan politely sits opposite her and accepts a cup of Ti’il tea.

 

While her husband gets over his dramatics she may as well indulge in some light teasing. Although she is no longer angry with either of them, she feels it is her due. She waits until he has taken a sip before speaking.

 

“Have you tried biting Anakin? He makes the most delightful noise in the back of his throat when you do.”

 

Apparently, when surprised with a mouth full of tea, Obi-Wan makes a similar noise.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Anakin stands, facing the Council, long shadows cast on the dais in front of him.

 

There is no hint to the Jedi before them of the days and weeks of confession, fierce debate, and finally acceptance that had come before their decision to be here today. Obi-Wan and his former Padawan are a quiet, steady presence in the Force.

 

He shifts, his fear creeping to pick at the edge of his calm, despite the strength of his former Master at his back. Obi-Wan places his hand in his and laces their fingers together for a second before letting go, the overt gesture of affection causing a murmur of disquiet to rise in the Force around him.

 

He gathers himself in the silence. He must do this, and he must do it now.

 

Anakin places his lightsaber on the dais before him.

 

“It is with much regret that I surrender this.”

 

Confusion ripples through the Council.

 

He reaches for the ties at the left side of his obi, the synthleather so worn from the thousands of times he has tied and untied it that it feels like skin: warm and supple. He undoes the simple spacer's knot that Master Drallig had taught him and folds it in two before leaning forward to place it carefully next to his lightsaber.

 

“It is with much regret that I surrender this.”

 

“What are you doing?” Master Windu hisses.

 

His outer robes are next, baring the simple tunic and trousers worn by younglings and Padawan. He folds them, neater than he has ever done before, knowing this will be the last time he does so. He wants to bring them to his nose and breathe them in - he knows that they smell of both him and Obi-Wan, and of the sapir tea that Obi-Wan drinks in the evening sometimes. The left hem is held together by about 80 tiny stitches, sewn by Obi-Wan who is by far the better of them at mending anything that isn’t mechanical in nature.

 

He sets them down beside his lightsaber, “It is with much regret that I surrender these.”

 

“Stop this display at once, Master Skywalker!” Only Windu has kept his voice, all other Jedi are silent: disbelief soaking into the very air.

 

Lastly, he takes his Padawan braid from his pocket, and holds it for a second in both hands, something like reverence in the gesture.

 

He lays it down next to everything else.

 

“I regret I cannot walk this road with you.”

 

He steps back and the world rushes in: he is done.

 

“Master Kenobi, what is the meaning of this?! Explain yourselves at once!”

 

“It is with much regret…” Obi-Wan begins,

 

“NO!”

 

“..that I surrender this.” He sets his lightsaber down next to Anakin’s, and his words are a stone thrown into a calm lake.

 

“You cannot!”

 

“We’re at war!”

 

“You are Jedi Knights!”

 

Master Yoda ignores his fellow Councillors and slips gracefully from his chair, making his way towards where Obi-Wan is undoing his sash, eyes downcast.

 

“Please, Master Kenobi, tell us what the cause of this is. We cannot help if ask you do not.”

 

Obi-Wan wavers for a second, before placing his sash carefully beside his lightsaber.

 

“It is with much regret that I surrender this.”

 

By the time Obi-Wan is laying his own Padawan braid with the other symbols of their old life in front of them, Anakin has given up on making any effort to hide the tears that roll down his face.

 

Obi-Wan directs the last words of the ritual directly to Yoda, and it is more a plea than a statement, more whisper than words:

 

“I regret I cannot walk this road with you.”

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**year one**  


Anakin is nearly insensate already, his head lolling on Obi-Wan’s shoulder as Obi-Wan thrusts into him from below, keeping up a steady rhythm that he knows from experience is too slow to allow Anakin to orgasm.

 

Obi-Wan senses Padme approaching the bedroom, fresh out of her evening bath, and slows down even more in case she wants to join them. His hips stutter as he catches sight of her beyond Anakin’s shoulder: she is naked but for the almost invisible harness flaring out from the flesh coloured dildo, slicked with lube, jutting out from her lightly haired thighs. It sways with her hips as she crawls onto the bed behind Anakin, who twists his head round for a deep kiss. Obi-Wan doesn’t need their Force-bond to sense the moment Anakin feels the length of Padme against his back: Anakin stops breathing for a second and his eyes widen.

 

“No,” he swallows, eyes darting to Obi-Wan’s, “it won’t fit.”

 

Anakin has come to a conclusion that simply hadn’t occurred to Obi-Wan, who had been preparing himself to make way for Padme. He ignores Anakin and meets Padme’s steady gaze. He raises an eyebrow and she smiles in answer.

 

She entwines a slim hand into the sweaty curls at the back of Anakin’s head and leans so she can speak directly into his ear, “won’t you try? For me, my love?”

 

Anakin groans, and allows his head to fall forward so he is resting on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, “Please, Master, I can’t.”

 

Obi-Wan strokes a hand up Anakin’s flank, and begins to move again, shallow thrusts that keep most of him inside.

 

“Shhh, no-one is going to hurt you Anakin.”

 

He can’t see, but he can feel the echoes of what Anakin is feeling, and he allows himself to fall further into their bond so he can keep his promise to his former Padawan.

 

Padme lines up and he feels Anakin’s slight flinch as she drizzles more lube between his ass cheeks. She slowly, so slowly, pushes in until Anakin is finally fully seated between them. The warm, not-skin of the dildo is almost too much for Obi-Wan as he also grapples with the feedback from Anakin, who is panting and making small, pained noises on every exhale, but shows no distress in the Force.

 

As Padme begins to move, Obi-Wan holds himself still, the pressure of being inside Anakin magnified more than he thought possible by Padme’s thrusts.

 

He is getting nothing from Anakin through the Force except for a kind of blank, blind abandon: the all consuming freedom of letting go. Yoda could’ve danced his way across the foot of their bed and Anakin wouldn't have noticed.

 

That thought is probably the only thing that keeps Obi-Wan from spilling over, instead he holds on to the finest silken thread of control until Anakin’s own frays and takes him over the edge.

 

**~**

 

As Anakin comes back to himself, he’s alarmed to feel Padme shaking behind him.

 

“Padme?” He asks as he half turns from his position in Obi-Wan’s lap, “What’s wrong?”

 

He can only partially see her, but his addled senses are telling him that it’s mirth rather than tears that are causing her to shake, so he turns back to see if Obi-Wan has more of a handle on the situation, and, blinking a few times to focus, realises why Padme is now lying on her back making small hiccuping noises through her laughter: Anakin had come with enough force to hit Obi-Wan on the chin.

 

He looks ridiculous.

 

Anakin makes a complicated gesture at his own face that probably fails to convey the state of Obi-Wan’s beard at this point, whilst Padme continues to laugh behind him.

 

“Er, Master? You have something on your face”

 

**year three**

 

Anakin is insistent that the twins Padme is carrying are his _and_ Obi-Wan’s. Padme indulges Anakin from the start, and had been deeply amused by Obi-Wan’s flustered attempt to explain that he and Padme had never actually _performed_ _penetrative intercourse_ and it was therefore impossible. Anakin had been serene throughout the whole conversation, and had just shrugged in that maddening way of his before claiming again that he ‘just knew’.

 

Obi-Wan couldn’t deny that it stirs something inside him, some instinct he thought he would never experience first hand, whenever Padme places his hand on the fullness of her belly so he can feel one or the other of them kick.

 

Impossible or not, they will never lack for love.

 

**~~~**  


They had been in with Padme, until Anakin’s distress was so much that she had thrown them out into the outer chambers where Anakin could continue to pace without bothering her or making the medical droid nervous, which Obi-Wan hadn’t even thought possible.

 

Obi-wan had initially settled himself down to wait in meditation, but the turmoil emanating from Anakin is too much for him.

 

“Come, sit.”

 

Anakin barks a short, humourless laugh.

 

“Meditation isn’t my greatest skill at the best of times.”

 

“I’m not asking you to meditate, I’m asking you to come here, and sit with me,” Obi-Wan replies, patience woven through every word.

 

Anakin sighs heavily to himself before folding himself agilely opposite Obi-Wan, mirroring his meditative pose.

 

Obi-Wan tilts his head slightly and Anakin twitches a brow in disagreement. He looks stubbornly at his former Master for the space of a few heartbeats, before deciding it isn’t worth the fight and turning around. Strong arms pull him back so he is seated in the V of Obi-Wan’s legs, his back warming quickly where they touch.

 

Obi-Wan smooths down his curls with one hand and presses a kiss to the side of his head,

“Now, I love you more than I thought it was possible to love anything or anyone, but if you don’t stop pacing I’m going to set fire to your speeder.” And with that, he leans back slightly and closes his eyes to resume his mediation.

 

Anakin swallows past the sudden tightness in his throat and half turns so he can see Obi-Wan’s calm visage.

 

_I love you too, Obi-Wan_ , he sends through the Force

 

Obi-Wan half smiles, _I know_

 

Anakin returns the smile, despite the fact that Obi-Wan can’t see it, and settles into a better position within the comfort of his arms.

 

Together, they wait.

  


**year eight**

  


When Luke is five, Anakin is play-fighting with him when he slips and falls. It happens so fast that he doesn't even have time to call on the Force to catch his son, and the sound of his wrist snapping is loud in the sudden hush. Anakin, in the moment of realisation of what has happened, shatters every window on the ground floor, causing Padme to come running. He can’t even comfort his crying son, too caught up in the horror of having caused him pain, not just any pain, but this strangely familiar agony that feels as if someone has struck an almighty bell within him: the echoes vibrating through him, through the air, through space and time.

 

Later, when Luke has chosen the colour of bacta he wanted (purple) and is asleep under light sedation, Padme leans forward and takes her first husband’s face in her hands, kissing him briefly to make sure she has his full attention.

 

“Anakin, if I thought you were a threat to our children, what do you think I would do?”

 

Anakin considers the question, and the answer that comes to him, the truth, causes relief to tidal through him, erasing his half formed fears and doubts.

 

“You would kill me: you would find a way.”

 

Padme nods, still holding his gaze.

 

“You are the strongest person I have ever met,” he tells her.

 

She smiles, a little sadly, he thinks, and kisses him again.

  


**year ten**

  


Obi-Wan quickens his footsteps as he nears home - his senses telling him that there are familiar Jedi nearby. There is no fear, but he can feel Padme’s anger like waves of heat in the desert.

 

This will be the second time members of the Council have come to visit: the first was just before the end of the war, although that time Anakin had crushed their aircar into the approximate size and shape of a training remote (without any Jedi in it, for which he remains grateful). Thankfully he is still at the local learning centre, teaching a class of excluded teens driod tech and maintance.

 

Obi-Wan assumes that the timing is purposeful.

 

When he enters Padme is stood, ramrod straight in the vestibule with the twins clutching her hands and murmuring quietly to each other.

 

As he approaches her he wonders if she fears, even after all these years, that the Jedi maintains sway over her family. He says nothing, aware that there is little privacy with two Jedi Masters so close, so instead he cups his hand to the warmth of her cheek and is rewarded by a little of the steel fading from her eyes. He tilts his head in question, and she nods decisively. Permission received, he walks out of he open doors to verdant grass that rolls down to the lake that their home is named after.

 

Master Yoda and Master Windu are sat on garden chairs, steaming cups in hand, seemingly admiring the view as aio fish jump for flies not far from shore.

  
They turn as Obi-Wan approaches the table, and as he sits he resists the half-forgotten urge to explain himself, his family, to his elders: there is nothing here he needs forgiveness for.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a very small epilogue to go


	3. epilogue

She is old.

Her husbands laugh at her when she tells them this, but she knows. She has to take a breath before climbing to her feet when she has been hours weeding the garden, but she hasn’t succumbed to Leia’s offer to build her a droid to do it for her. Yet.

Neither Obi-Wan or Anakin seem to be feeling the effects of time as it passes them, even accounting for Anakin’s relative youth to hers and Obi-Wan’s. They both spar most days, and do things to each other behind the closed doors of their bedroom that make her clench her thighs just to think of.

The twins had learned quickly that the ability to read the minds of their parents was not the apparent gift they had thought it would be.

Anakin laughs louder and longer with each decade that passes, she thinks. She shudders to remember the lost, sorrowful young man he had been as a Jedi.

Her husbands talk of their dreams sometimes, as she dozes between them in the early morning hush: of caves in deserts and duels and evil Emperors. Her dreams, when she remembers them, are almost frightening in their simplicity: darkness and silence. Of nothingness, of being not.

But these echoes of another life burn away in the soft afternoon light of Naboo; in the bright laughter of her children; in the furious heat of her husbands’ love for her, and for each other.

They have lived their life of joy.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,  
> You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me,  
> as of a dream,)  
> I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,  
> All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,  
> chaste, matured,  
> You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,  
> I ate with you, and slept with you- your body has become not yours  
> only, nor left my body mine only,  
> You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass- you  
> take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,  
> I am not to speak to you- I am to think of you when I sit alone, or  
> wake at night alone,  
> I am to wait- I do not doubt I am to meet you again,  
> I am to see to it that I do not lose you.  
> -To a Stranger, Walt Whitman


End file.
